Back Yard Owned by Gallatin River

What happens when a river changes it's course...? The answer is the trailer park that put the debris in the river to change it's course gets saved, and the home owners on the other side of the river lose property. On the bright side, I guess we can now say that we have true river front property!

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• owned
• Gallatin River
• flood
• Bozeman
• Montana
• MT
• River Road
• fish and game
• erosion
• losing
• water
• backyard
• back yard
• yard
• flooding
• creek
• change course trailer
• trailer park
• superdave4eva
• superdaveh4eva
• Manifest Creative
• @superdaveh4eva

[saffronstrand]

Agreed about the footage and the music. That does suck though. That trailer court is full of a lot of wonderful surprises isn't it? Are your neighbors getting in on this now? many voices are harder to ignore.

[superdave4eva]

I want to state that I do not have anything against trailer courts in general, in fact I lived in a mobile home for a short period of my life. I also apologize for generalizing and calling the individuals across the street collectively "the trailer court". I plan on investigating further...

[JillIon2112]

Nice choice of music! Good shooting - I like the unobtrusive boxes - it helps show the key points. Sucks how much land you lost. Is there anything the county or state can do? Fine the dumpers? Change the river's course back?

[superdave4eva]

Thanks for the comments on the video... especially because the whole thing was shot on my cell phone. We are looking in to what can be done, but it sounds like we are going to have to swim through a lot of red tape to get anything accomplished. As a side note, the last time we talked to a fish and game officer, he had the overly helpful comment of "There isn't much you can do, rivers move... that is the hazard of living next them."

[JS521]

It is unfortunate that you are loosing land but the FW&P officer is correct. Living next to a river has it's benefits but along with those benefits there are perils that can come as well. Loss of land happens to be one of those. Good luck securing the proper permits to stabilize your banks. The easy mitigation to the problem is to rip rap the bank, but that will only force the issue onto someone downstream of you. You may want to look into revegitation of the bank with willows.

[JPT5000]

I would talk to Russ McElyea and get his opinion. His specialty is water rights and he is a very sharp guy. I took some classes from him in school and he'll be able to let you know what your options are. What was the debris that was deposited upstream and how did it come about?

McElyea W Russell Attorney

601 Haggerty Lane

Bozeman, MT

[JillIon2112]

Have you talked to a lawyer? I understand there is some assumption of land loss if one lives next to a river, but it wasn't a natural change of course. The trailer park caused you to lose use and enjoyment of your land.